Well, after arriving in Adelaide, I met up with my friend Matt and his girlfriend Kelly. They immediately took me under their wing and whisked me off on a whirlwind tour of their relatives. After that they invited me to spend Christmas with them at a hired cottage near the wine growing region of the Clair valley.
Matt and Kelly had grown tired of rushing around visiting a million people on Christmas day, so they had decided to get away from it all and spend a chilled out Christmas with a few friends drinking eating and generally having a good time.
I know Kelly and Matt from my student days when I worked in a kitchen with Matt. He developed a fondness for whiskey while he was in Scotland, and came back and stayed with me earlier in the year while we visited some distilleries. He foolishly said I could come and stay with him for a little while when I came to oz, so there I was.
We arrived on Christmas day and chilled out at the cottage before everyone else arrived the next afternoon. Only leaving the cottage to go and visit a couple of nearby wineries. Its a hard life.
I was then introduced to Lisa, Nat, Christian and David. Lisa, nicknamed Pam because of her resemblance to Pamela Anderson and Christian, who might have escaped a nickname, are a couple that live in Adelaide and David is another friend of theirs that lives nearby. Nat, also called Pig-Dog I dont remember exactly why, used to work with Kelly and Pam, but moved to Melbourne so she was back in town for a few days to visit people.
A fine weekend of drinking wine and talking about nothing of any consequence ensued, a very pleasant way to spend your first christmas on the other side of the world from your family. All too quickly the weekend came to an end and I came back with Matt and Kelly and hung around their place like a bad smell, until I finally got myself in order and found myself a room in a house in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. My only concern now is finding myself some form of employment to fill the hours, and the bank account.
So, my aim was to travel from Esperence to Adelaide, a journey of around 2200km. Unfortunately I had no travelling companions handy and my car only had a radio and you don't get much reception in the middle of knowhere. It was going to be pretty damn boring.
My aim for the first day was to start early push on and get to the WA/SA border by tea time, only a journey of around 900km. As it turned out I managed to get within 80km of the border and spent the night camping at a roadhouse. All was going swimmingly, the car was going well and I was feeling pretty good.
Another early start had me on my way eastwards again, and I had various stop offs along the way to look at the beautiful coastline of the australian bight. At a couple of places the car started playing up a little, making worrying clicking noises instead of starting, but I managed to breath life into it each time. Each time that is until I got to the Nullabor roadhouse, where I got plenty of clicking noises but no starting of the engine. A quick consultation with the mechanic and a pair of jumper cables later and I was on my way again, chased by a gigantic thunderstorm. After realising I had a bit of a dodgy battery, probably because of the heat and the length of time I'd been driving, I was reluctant to stop so I pressed on, my aim for the day had been to get to Ceduna a town at the SA end of the Nullabor. However, when I got there I had a drive around town and wasnt too keen on stopping, so I decided to see how much further I could get.
Several hours later I made it to Adelaide with the minimum of stops, including a couple of cat naps and food breaks along the way, and that was my slightly eventful trip across the Nullabor. So I arrived in Adelaide on the 21st of December, and have been very hospitably put up by my friends Matt and Kelly.
They even took me round to various family occasions on Christmas day before letting me crash a 3 day break up to the Clare Valley(just next to the Annies Lane winery Shell) they had planned with some of their friends.